• Part 0: A little bit of set up!
• Part 1: reading in manually (point and click)
• Part 2: reading in directly & working directories
• Part 3: checking data & multiple file formats

We will cover Output a bit later!

Let’s make an R Project so we can stay organized in the next steps.

Click the new R Project button at the top left of RStudio:

In the New Project Wizard, click “New Directory”:

Click “New Project”:

Type in a name for your new folder.

Store it somewhere easy to find, such as your Desktop:

You now have a new R Project folder on your Desktop!

Make sure you add any scripts or data files to this folder as we go through today’s lesson. This will make sure R is able to “find” your files.

We will review this in lab.

• ‘Reading in’ data is the first step of any real project/analysis
• R can read almost any file format, especially via add-on packages
• We are going to focus on simple delimited files first
  • comma separated (e.g. ‘.csv’)
  • tab delimited (e.g. ‘.txt’)
  • Microsoft Excel (e.g. ‘.xlsx’)

• We have added functionality to load some datasets directly in the dasehr package

CalEnviroScreen Dataset:

CalEnviroScreen is a project that ranks census tracts in California based on potential exposures to pollutants, adverse environmental conditions, socioeconomic factors and the prevalence of certain health conditions. Data used in the CalEnviroScreen model come from national and state sources.

• Check out the data at: https://calenviroscreen-oehha.hub.arcgis.com/#Data

• > File
• > Import Dataset
• > From Text (readr)
• > paste the url (https://daseh.org/data/CalEnviroScreen_data.csv)
• > click “Update” and “Import”

You see a preview of the data on the top left pane.

You see a new object called CalEnviroScreen_data in your environment pane (top right). The table button opens the data for you to view.

R ran some code in the console (bottom left).

Pros: easy!!

Cons: obscures some of what’s happening, others will have difficulty running your code

R Projects will make it easier to find files later.

Importing data:

• File > Import Dataset > From Text (readr)
• Paste the url (https://daseh.org/data/CalEnviroScreen_data.csv)
• Click “Update” and “Import”

Review the process: https://youtu.be/LEkNfJgpunQ

🏠 Class Website

💻 Data Input Lab

# load library `readr` that contains function `read_csv`
library(readr)
dat <- read_csv(
  file = "https://daseh.org/data/CalEnviroScreen_data.csv
"
)

# `head` displays first few rows of a data frame. `tail()` works the same way.
head(dat, n = 5)

# A tibble: 0 × 1
# ℹ 1 variable: https://daseh.org/data/CalEnviroScreen_data.csv <chr>

dat <- read_csv(
  file = "https://daseh.org/data/CalEnviroScreen_data.csv
"
)
# EQUIVALENT TO
dat <- read_csv(
  "https://daseh.org/data/CalEnviroScreen_data.csv"
)

read_csv() needs an argument file =.

• file is the path to your file, in quotation marks
• can be path to a file on a website (URL)
• can be path in your local computer – absolute file path or relative file path

# Examples

dat <- read_csv(file = "www.someurl.com/table1.csv")

dat <- read_csv(file = "/Users/avahoffman/Downloads/CalEnviroScreen_data.csv")

dat <- read_csv(file = "CalEnviroScreen_data.csv")

Reading from your computer.. What is my “path”?

When you set up an R Project, R looks for files in that folder.

Luckily, we already set up an R Project!

Move downloaded files into the R Project folder.

Confirm the data is in the R Project folder.

If we add the CalEnviroScreen_data.csv file to the R Project folder, we can use the file name for the file argument:

dat <- read_csv(file = "CalEnviroScreen_data.csv")

When we create an R Project, we establish the working directory.

Working directory is a folder (directory) that RStudio assumes “you are working in”.

It’s where R looks for files.

The working directory is wherever the .Rproj file is.

If you move a file into a nested folder, you must update the path!

# Notice "data/" has been added!
dat <- read_csv(file = "data/CalEnviroScreen_data.csv")

Always confirm you read in the data by checking the “Environment” pane (top right).

• the View() function shows your data in a new tab, in spreadsheet format
• be careful if your data is big!

View(dat)

read_csv() is a special case of read_delim() – a general function to read a delimited file into a data frame

read_delim() needs path to your file and file’s delimiter, will return a tibble

• file is the path to your file, in quotes
• delim is what separates the fields within a record

## Examples
dat <- read_delim(file = "www.someurl.com/table1.tsv", delim = "\t")

dat <- read_delim(file = "data.txt", delim = "|")

• You cannot read in an excel file from a URL.
• Need to load the readxl package with library().
• The argument is path (not file).

# Programmatically download
download.file(
  url = "https://daseh.org/data/asthma.xlsx",
  destfile = "asthma.xlsx",
  overwrite = TRUE,
  mode = "wb"
)

• You cannot read in an excel file from a URL.
• Need to load the readxl package with library().
• The argument is path (not file).

library(readxl)

read_excel(path = "asthma.xlsx")

• haven package has functions to read SAS, SPSS, Stata formats

library(haven)

# SAS
read_sas(file = "mtcars.sas7bdat")

# SPSS
read_sav(file = "mtcars.sav")

# Stata
read_dta(file = "mtcars.dta")

• There are also resources for REDCap : REDCapR

There are also data importing functions provided in base R (rather than the readr package), like read.delim() and read.csv().

These functions have slightly different syntax for reading in data (e.g. header argument).

However, while many online resources use the base R tools, the latest version of RStudio switched to use these new readr data import tools, so we will use them in the class for slides. They are also up to two times faster for reading in large datasets, and have a progress bar which is nice.

1. Working directory problems: trying to read files that R “can’t find”
   • Path misspecification
   • more on this shortly!
2. Typos (R is case sensitive, x and X are different)
   • RStudio helps with “tab completion”
3. Open ended quotes, parentheses, and brackets
   
4. Different versions of software
5. Deleting part of the code chunk

For any function, you can write ?FUNCTION_NAME, or help("FUNCTION_NAME") to look at the help file:

?read_delim
help("read_delim")

If your R project directory and working directory do not match:

• Session > Set Working Directory > To Project Directory

If you are trying to knit your work, it might help to set the knit directory to the “Current Working Directory”:

You can also run the getwd() function to determine your working directory.

# Get the working directory
getwd()

You can also set the working directory manually with the setwd() function:

# set the working directory
setwd("/Users/avahoffman/Desktop")

• The str() function can tell you about data/objects (different variables and their classes - more on this later).
• We will also discuss the glimpse() function later, which does something very similar.
• head() shows first few rows
• tail() shows the last few rows
• here package

library(here)
here()

read_csv() function from readr package:

• comma delimited data
• needs a file path to be provided
• returns a tibble (data frame)

R Projects are a good way to keep your files organized and reduce headaches

• Use getwd() to check your working directory, where R looks for your data files

Look at your data!

• Check the environment for a data object
• View() gives you a preview of the data in a new tab

Other file types

• readr package: read_delim() for general delimited files
• readxl package: read_excel() for Excel files

Don’t forget to use <- to assign your data to an object!

🏠 Class Website

💻 Data Input Lab

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

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